According to a recent post on the For MD blog, Electronic Health Records Decreases Profitability for Most Physician Practices, a recent survey indicates that physician productivity decreases with EHR use while showing no financial benefits. Emdat allows physicians to continue to dictate while using an EHR. Our mobile app can be used to create documentation on-the-go using dictation and templates and auto-populated appointment and demographic information. Authenticated documentation is automatically integrated into the EHR. Emdat can help medical facilities meet their documentation and budgetary goals, all while retaining physician productivity and satisfaction.

Practices may see an increase clinician productivity and support patient-focused care when using an EHR. But shifting the documentation burden just shifts documentation costs. Why not decrease costs instead? Emdat allows physicians to dictate on a mobile app where clinicians can easily create and complete documentation that is automatically populated to the EHR. This approach delivers a low cost model that maximizes efficiency. Clinician productivity increases while workflow and revenue capacity is retained without compromising attention to patients.

Point-and-click documentation can be labor intensive and time consuming.
When the documentation burden is just that, an ever-increasing burden, it's not surprising that some medical professionals are tempted to use cut-and-paste in an effort to speed documentation. See Modern Healthcare's article
Feds eye crackdown on cut-and-paste EHR fraud. If documentation efficiency is maximized — using dictation on a mobile device that delivers patient demographics and history to create documentation that can auto-populate an EHR — these shortcuts will be unnecessary. Physicians can create original, accurate documentation for each patient easily. And the thorough, narrative documentation that results will facilitate appropriate coding.

The argument seems to show some bias for front-end VR, but shares the benefits of back-end VR as an option for those that clinicians that do not have enough time to see patients, dictate notes and edit records.

Using dictation to create narrative content placed in the EHR can positively impact cost, quality and patient experience. CEO Randy Olver discusses the benefits, requirements and success stories of documenting with dictation in "The Hybrid Approach" featured in the October issue of Health Management Technology.

Emdat Mobile helped Midwest Orthopaedics at Rush (MOR) achieve their operational and financial documentation goals. With Emdat, the busy practice could not only more effectively manage fellows'/residents' involvement in documenting, but also support their mission to teach students of all levels. With Emdat Mobile customized to mirror their intricate workflow, documentation could be dictated, routed appropriately, and then authenticated by team members at any time from any location, speeding completion.

Today, Emdat announced the release of a whiteboard animation video illustrating what we've always believed — that using dictation to create documentation in the EHR is the best use of the clinician's time. As EHRs become more prevalent, many clinicians are required to use point-and-click and front-end speech recognition to document — methods that have been shown to be more time consuming and impair the patient experience. The video spells out Emdat deliverables — maximizing clinician productivity and reducing documentation costs all while supporting meaningful use.

Documentation is not a one-size-fits-all model, and return on investment (ROI) is not a straightforward calculation. Organizations must keep individual physician work habits in mind — along with tangible and intangible costs — to select the best method of information capture for the practice. Each method of patient encounter documentation in an EHR has its benefits and drawbacks. Read more in Getting the Most From Your Documentation Dollars, an eNews exclusive from the For the Record newsletter.